


ripe for the picking

by gunk



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: INCREDIBLY BRIEF DRIFTROD ONLY IMPLIED, Inflation, Lab Accidents, M/M, Magical Accidents, Science, blueberry inflation, science is basically magic right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-25 16:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17728529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunk/pseuds/gunk
Summary: Brainstorm wasincrediblyclear about not touching things in his lab; Rodimus isincrediblypetty.





	1. Chapter 1

“Thanks for your help, Riptide.”

Riptide saluted as he stood up, in the process somehow managing to both smack himself in the face  _ and _ bang his doorknob that he had been working underneath. He shook his head, then tried again.

“No prob! You know I like doing stuff I’m not supposed to do.”

“Uh...right,” Rodimus scratched the back of his head. “You know you aren’t supposed to  _ tell anyone _ about this, right?”

Riptide winked. “Of  _ course _ !”

Great. While Riptide may have been unreliable, Rodimus at least didn’t need him to stay quiet about their little ‘heist’ for long- just for long enough to let Rodimus do what he needed to do. Riptide departed with a smile and another wink, and Rodimus waved him off gleefully, winking back. 

What Riptide lacked in brains, he made up in brawn- or, least, in  _ bulk _ . He had been able to finangle the lock off of Brainstorm’s lab door with sheer savant-like strategy, though, not needing to use very much of his physical strength at all. Rodimus was able to slip into the lab without hassle, leaving noone- including Riptide- the wiser as to why he was snooping around within. Rodimus smirked a bit to himself as he he began to root around the dark lab, tiptoeing out of habit; yes, even if Riptide  _ did _ run off and tell people what he had just aided in, noone would know what Rodimus was actually doing there. He could make up any excuse that he wanted for what he was doing in here. Maybe he was the real Ship’s Genius after a-

“Brainstorm?”

Rodimus dropped to the ground. Oh, right- Perceptor worked here, too. The light flicked on, and Rodimus heard Perceptor take a few steps towards him from the room adjacent to Brainstorm’s lab, but Rodimus wasn’t willing to go down without a fight. He shuffled across the floor on his belly, looking along the way for anything that he could quickly mess up before leaving. He heard Perceptor take a few more steps around the lab, and then a grumbled, ‘ _ must be hallucinating...working for too long _ ’ before the footsteps receded.

Even that little run-in was too close for comfort. Rodimus rose up from the floor the moment that the lights were switched back off, ducking out of the lab with a beaker in hand and then taking off down the hall. It was Rodimus’s turn to grumble something to himself as he walked, murmuring complaints about how he hoped this thing was at least  _ sort of _ important. Really, the beaker didn’t look like much at all, labelled with a ‘food safe’ sticker and filled with a pastel blue fluid that smelled a bit like soap. Was it soap? Oh, Primus, had he just broken into Brainstorm’s lab for  **_soap_ ** ? Rodimus didn’t have time to ponder that, though, as a different mech’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

“Hey dude! How’d it go?”

“Riptide!!” Rodimus couldn’t stop himself, nearly in more ways than one as he skidded to a halt. How was Riptide both so amazing and so terrible at being quiet? “Is anyone with you!?”

Riptide stood in the middle of the hallway with his usual smile plastered on his face, his hands firmly set on his hips. He  _ looked _ alone, but Rodimus could never be sure, especially since Riptide seemed to be an unlikely professional at making friends. Riptide cocked one eyebrow at Rodimus.

“Uh, yeah, why? I was gonna go get a drink. It looks like you’ve already got one, though.”

“Oh, this? Yeah, it’s, uh…” Rodimus stammered.

“Well, if you don’t want it, I can take it off your hands-” Riptide was already reaching for the beaker, but Rodimus quickly threw back the hand holding it before the larger mech could grab it.

“ **_No!_ ** ”

Again, Rodimus’s words came out a bit louder than he would have hoped, but that was probably an understatement this time around. His shout echoed down both ends of the long hallway, carrying back to the lab- and, evidently, back to Perceptor. Rodimus blanched as he heard the door open behind them, struggling to come up with a way out of this. With Riptide beginning to reach for the beaker again, and now Perceptor’s head poking out of the doorway, Rodimus felt as though he only had one option: get rid of the evidence. He downed the pastel fluid in one go, gagging a bit at the taste, but determindly not spitting any of it out. The beaker was then thrust into Riptide’s still-grasping hand, as Rodimus licked his lips of any evidence.

“Riptide, you  _ can’t tell Perceptor _ that I had this, ok? Even if he asks-”

In one fell swoop, Riptide tossed the beaker into his mouth and chewed. The audible gulp that followed was enough to make Rodimus’s mouth hang open in shock, remaining that way until Riptide spoke again.

“No worries, I do stuff like this all the time for Nautica! She calls me her ‘living trash compactor’.”

Rodimus didn’t have time to process that-  _ any _ of that- before Perceptor gently tapped him on the shoulder from behind. At least he had manners (though, Rodimus wasn’t really sure if  **_that_ ** was what was wrong with whatever he had just witnessed).

“Pardon me, have you two seen Brainstorm? I thought I heard him in his lab just now.”

Rodimus had to clench his teeth in a smile to fight back the rage rising in him, as Riptide opened his mouth to speak, “Oh, yeah! Rodimus was just in there.”

Perceptor raised an eyebrow, but didn’t seem too perturbed. Thank fucking Primus.

“Oh, well, alright. You didn’t see Brainstorm?”

Still, the overly-clenched smile remained, and Rodimus added a pained laugh for good measure.

“Nope! He should be back  _ pretty soon _ , though!”

Perceptor nodded, and Rodimus was able to relax once more as Perceptor took his leave back towards their shared lab spaces. Riptide threw a comradely arm around Rodimus’s shoulders, scooping him up tight; Rodimus turned to shoot daggers at him.

“What? I didn’t tell him you had the thingy!”

“You weren’t. Supposed. To  _ tell anyone _ .  **_That I was in the lab_ ** .”

“Oh. I thought that was, like...special code.”

Rodimus raked his hands down either side of his face. Was petty revenge at Brainstorm worth all of this? Drinking soap (or food coloring, maybe- why would soap be labelled ‘food safe’?), dealing with Riptide’s genius, and now being condescended by Perceptor, all only to get back at Brainstorm for telling him not to come into his lab while he was working. Riptide let go of Rodimus’s shoulders and began to head towards the bar, but Rodimus didn’t let him go.

“Hey, wait- I think I’m gonna join you.”

“Huh? But you just had a drink.”

Rodimus smiled again, this time genuinely. “Hey, you know what they say- Mondays, amiright?”

“Are you right?”

He sighed, but continued down the hallway with Riptide.


	2. Chapter 2

Not surprisingly, most of Rodimus’s worries melted away once he started drinking. The bar was buzzing, even more than usual, with Swerve darting between patrons as fast as his little legs could carry him. Rodimus still had some restraint as he sipped at the dredges of his drink, but he couldn’t say the same for his table.

“An’ that’s why I don’t show off my magnawheels anymore!”

Riptide was the first to erupt into laughter at Trailbreaker’s meandering story, and the others- Skids, Jackpot, and a small bot that Rodimus felt ashamed to not remember- all soon followed. There must have been $50 spent already by each respective lush, though Trailbreaker’s tab was likely double (if not triple) that by now. Though Rodimus was feeling a bit sick to his stomach- he chalked that up to not having indulged in awhile- he chuckled.

“You’re a mess, Teebs.”

Trailbreaker looked up from his drink. The smile on his face widened into a full grin as he made eye contact with his captain, and he shot back with a laugh,

“Yeah? Well you’re green!”

Again, Riptide erupted into laughter, but the table didn’t follow suit this time. Rodimus looked between the silent crowd, all distracted from their drinks- or, in the case of Rodimus, this remains of his (could Swerve  _ hurry up _ already?- but they all seemed to share the ‘no fucking clue’ look that he had on his face. The lighting of the bar wasn’t the greatest, though, and he  _ was _ silently asking the opinions of several drunks, but Rodimus felt comforted by the fact that none of them saw anything glaringly wrong.

He snorted, “Whatever you say.”

It was only then that Riptide finally stopped chuckling. His mouth hung open more than usual as he looked at Rodimus, squinting.

“Uh, dude, he’s right- you’re  _ green _ .”

“What?” Rodimus looked down at his hands. Nope, still orange. He opened his mouth to speak, but Swerve finally, blessedly arrived to dole out new drinks. “Thanks.”

The distraction seemed to keep Trailbreaker and the two smallest bots busy, but Skids had now joined Riptide in staring incredulously at Rodimus. He tried to ignore it, just chuckling to himself in a ‘look, see, I’m in on the joke!’ way, before taking a big swig from his glass.

“Ugh! Swerve, come back here!”

“Kinda busy, but  _ sure _ , let me just fragging drop everything-”

Swerve trailed off as he came over, and Skids spoke up,

“Rodimus, your entire face is  **_green_ ** . Seriously, like, uh-”

“What’s the problem?”

With both hands on his hips, Swerve stared Rodimus down. Rodimus couldn’t help but notice the little twitch of his brow as they made eye contact, and the substance from the lab came flooding back to the forefront of his mind, but this was  _ Brainstorm _ they were talking about- Brainstorm wouldn’t have made something so trivial and un-explosion-y as a vial of edible plating dye.

“The  _ problem _ is that you gave me some kind of fruity garbage, when I asked for Old Corroder.”

Swerve cocked his eyebrow further.

“Uh, that  _ is _ Old Corroder, buddy. I know because I served it, and because I can smell it from here.”

“Yeah, Rodimus, I can smell it from over  _ here _ , too,” Skids stood up, walking over to Rodimus’s side. “Oof, yeah- That’s definitely far from ‘fruity’.”

Rodimus’s tanks gurgled. The rink that he had taken a big swig of had tasted unmistakably- it was like a mouthful of juice, for Primus’s sake! He held the glass up to his nose, sniffing it, and it still smelled like juice. Rodimus stuck a pinky in to taste it- still juice.

“You guys are kidding me right now.”

“Roddy...You know it’s against bar policy for me to ask, but are you feeling ok?”

Swerve had broken into a semi-horrified scowl, one of his hands going to Rodimus’s shoulder. His stomach gurgled and growled again, and Rodimus felt himself flush. He hadn’t been drinking  _ that much _ for his tanks to be  **_this_ ** upset- something was wrong, and Rodimus may not have known what, but he knew why. He set down his drink and went to push himself up from the table, but Skids and Swerve all but held him in place.

“Here, I can have Skids take you to the medbay-”

“I’m fine! I just had a little too much, it’s fine. You guys are overreacting.”

Swerve let him go; Skids seemed less convinced. He was wobbling on his feet a bit, sure, but he wasn’t nearly as drunk as the others were (which would have been a true feat, given who they were drinking with), which only made things feel worse for Rodimus. Rodimus scowled at him, as Skids trailed him out of the bar (with Swerve  _ graciously _ shouting after them that they could both pay their tabs in a few hours).

“What? Why are you following me!?”

Rodimus waited until they were both in the hallway before he hissed at Skids, trying not to make a scene.

“Roddy, you  _ really _ don’t look good. Please, let me take you to Ratchet, it can’t hurt.”

It could hurt. A lot. If Brainstorm found out that he had been in his lab, he might...Primus, what  _ would _ he do? Sure, Rodimus was the captain, but they all knew that Brainstorm hardly ever respected that. Rodimus scowled, before jabbing a finger at Skids’s chest.

“You are  **_not_ ** making me go  **_anywhere_ ** . Ok!?”

Skids frowned, but didn’t follow Rodimus as he began to walk away again.

“You didn’t have to blow up on me like that!”

Rodimus’s hands went to his stomach. He felt hot, everywhere, but when it had gurgled this time, something had felt...different. One of his hands went up to his mouth, stifling a belch that never came, but the other still on his stomach was able to acutely feel the concave curve of his flat stomach turn very,  _ very _ convex. He tried to muffle his gasp, but Skids still heard it, rushing to Rodimus’s side.

“You’ve gone pale!”

Sure enough, Rodimus pulled his hands away from his body to give them a good look, and he found his plating to be a sickly sort of pink-green color. His stomach gurgled again, and he watched it bloat out a bit more, this time with Skids watching as well.

“What the hell is happening!?”

“ _ Please _ let me take you to a medic, this is  _ really weird _ -”

Rodimus batted Skids away, starting to take off down the hallway with renewed vigor.

“It’s fine!” Rodimus’s hands went back to his stomach, feeling it gurgle; he couldn’t help but stare down at himself, the color spreading even further throughout his frame as it ran down his legs. “Don’t tell anyone about this!”

Skids stood there with a dumbfounded look, but Rodimus didn’t linger to see it. He broke into a run as soon as he turned the corner- for some reason, his brain telling him not to attempt to transform,  _ or else _ (?!?)- and he took off for exactly where he knew he needed to go. He needed an antidote, an antivenom, an anti- _ something _ to get rid of this before it got even worse. His stomach gurgled even louder as he continued on his journey to the lab, though there was thankfully only one passersby that bore witness to his spectacle as he ran past. He felt bad for that, just a bit- out of all of the bots that it could have been, he knew that he must have shook poor Tailgate down to his core with the strange sight.

Pounding on the door as soon as he had arrived, Rodimus tried desperately to let himself back in. The door had been relocked since he had last left Perceptor, maybe? He couldn’t remember locking it himself- but if he could just...get... _ in! _ Rodimus stumbled through the doorway after nearly kicking the door in, and just as frantically as he broke into the lab, he began searching for a cure in a frenzied panic. His stomach gurgled again, loudly, just as he moved to turn on the lights to hopefully aid in his search.

“Ugh-”

Rodimus leaned against the wall, feeling dizzy. He looked down at his bloated stomach, but what he saw wasn’t just contained to his stomach- no, it had spread  _ everywhere _ . His body was turning a darker color, now, a deep purple hue that reminded him of his favorite blackberry drink at the bar (for when he  _ was _ ) in a fruity mood. The thought of berries lingered horribly on Rodimus’s mind as he tried to process just what the hell he was looking at.

“Having fun?”

“ _BRAINSTORM!!_ ” Rodimus shouted with as much vigor as he could manage, turning to face his persecutor- or, hopefully now, his savior- behind him. 

His stomach’s noises turned to a groan as he attempted to move his hefty body, horrified as he watched it begin to expand out to unnatural proportions. His legs, too, were swelling a bit, though not nearly as much; he looked at his arms, and it was the same there. He couldn’t see it, though he could  _ feel _ his backside swelling just as much as his stomach, and the sides of his body were beginning to fill out to connect the two.

“When you drank that chemical, Rodimus, what did it taste like? I mean, I already know- I just want to hear you say it.”

Brainstorm strolled nonchalantly up to his side. He looked Rodimus up and down, like he was judging a crop at a state fair- not like he was watching his captain expand out at a rapid pace. Rodimus groaned, but tried to answer,

“Like- like soap? I don’t know, just  _ HELP ME _ _!_ ”

“ _ The taste is off, then _ ,” Brainstorm mumbled to himself, before poking a finger into Rodimus’s swelling side. His body expanded out twice as fast to fill the puckered mark once Brainstorm had pulled back his finger, and Rodimus whined. “Mm, yeah, I  _ could _ do that; or, I could have, if this was one of my finished projects. Unfortunately, what you drank was a prototype, something I was still-”

Rodimus shouted indistinctly. He was turning from a purple to a deep,  _ dark _ blue, and his stomach had grown so large that it was beginning to weigh him down. It was getting hard to stand on his swollen legs, their girth also tinted the same indigo, but oddly, Rodimus found that none of it actually hurt.

“You have to be able to do something! Let some of this air out of me, or- or something!”

Brainstorm leaned against the corner of his workspace, lifting one hand to inspect the back of nonchalantly.

“Wrong again. One- I don’t  _ have _ to do anything (and I couldn’t, even if I wanted to), and two- there’s no air in you. That’s juice.”

By the time that Brainstorm had finished speaking, Rodimus already knew well enough the truth of his second point. He had fallen backwards, expecting to hit the ground with a hard thud but instead landing back on his own plush backside. He felt everything in him slosh as he fell, and the sensation of his frame hitting the ground was more like...well, more like a fruit falling from a branch than like a person falling on their ass. He felt stretched and full, but somehow, he didn’t quite feel  _ ripe _ . He knew that he still had quite a bit to go, even if he didn’t know where it would stop- and, though he couldn’t quite completely get over the horror of the situation, he felt oddly accepting.

His arms were so swollen at his sides that they began to stick up in the air a bit, pointed out in a sort of ‘Y’ position. Brainstorm watched him with a disinterested and yet raptly attentive look, as Rodimus’s body was pushed out even further. He moaned, feeling his entire body slosh around again from his backwards growth lurching him forwards. He was nearly round, looking not wholly unlike one of the berries from his favorite drink. Brainstorm stood up as Rodimus felt like he could nearly take no more, strolling up to Rodimus’s side, and giving his massive belly a gentle pat.

“Almost done, unless I’ve gotten the ingredient distribution wrong,” He coughed his next words under his breath, “Again.”

Rodimus groaned again. His rounded shape was pushing him up, out of his ‘sitting’ position as he simply grew too orbular to physically be able to sit any longer. He had been mostly oblivious to the things he had been knocking off of shelves behind him- really, he had bigger issues right now than worrying about pissing off Brainstorm any further by making a mess- but he was suddenly acutely aware of just  _ how much _ space he was taking up. He was gigantic, swollen probably double his original size, even triple or beyond that still.

When the swelling finally stopped, it took him a moment to notice. He sighed, though he didn’t feel very relaxed at all- more just pleased that he wouldn’t get any more gargantuan than he already was. He tried to wiggle his hands and feet, but they wouldn’t budge, encased at all sides by his impossibly bloated limbs and equally-inconceivable body mass.

“Where are you going!?”

Talking was hard, but Rodimus pushed himself as hard as he could to get the words out, as Brainstorm strolled off into the depths of his lab. Rodimus couldn’t turn his head to watch him go, but surely he couldn’t just  **_leave_ ** , right!? As Rodimus began to panic, there was a distinctive click to his side- incredibly, terrifyingly distinctive.

“Oh. My. God.”

“Oh, I hope you don’t mind, Rodimus!” Brainstorm reemerged from his lab with a series of oversized tubes beneath his arms, and though Rodimus couldn’t see his mouth, he knew that he was beaming. “I thought I would invite a friend over. You know, to give you some  _ moral support _ .”

Drift looked at Rodimus with a look that couldn’t even be described as ‘disbelief’- rather, a look more aptly described as ‘are you fucking kidding me right now?’. Rodimus’s jaw dropped, and though he couldn’t see his own face, he knew that he was blushing. Brainstorm tossed Drift one of the tubes, instructing him nonverbally to walk over to one of Rodimus’s globular sides.

“Drift- I am  _ so sorry _ .”

“What, no sorry to me for wrecking my lab?”

Rodimus closed his eyes, only half listening as Brainstorm gave Drift instructions.  
  
“And you just-- probably take about 6 hours-- no, can’t pop, unless you do  _ this  _ or  _ this _ \-- should probably-maybe be fine, unless-- let me know when you're done juicing him!”

**Author's Note:**

> why he turned different colors: (green->greenpink->pinkblue->blue is the blueberry maturation stages


End file.
